Operational Military Networked Individual Tracking in Residential Area Confines

To address the U.S. Army need for highly accurate soldier tracking and visualization in Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT) testing and training environments, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to advance the development of the Operational Military Networked Individual Tracking in Residential Area Confines (OMNITRAC) system. OMNITRAC is based on intelligent data fusion of complementary GPS, RFID, and inertial sensor outputs to overcome sensor constraints in the MOUT environment, for accurate tracking of personnel position and orientation both inside and outside of buildings at high update rates. In Phase I POC demonstrated OMNITRAC feasibility by developing wireless GPS/RFID/inertial sensor cluster hardware and data fusion and visualization software, and demonstrating that it tracks personnel with weapons moving inside and outside of a building with positional accuracy of 0.15 m, orientation accuracy of 0.1 degree, and 80 Hz update rate. In Phase II POC will advance the OMNITRAC design into a full working prototype that accurately tracks soldiers in a MOUT testing/training environment, meeting the Army requirements for tracking accuracy (80 Hz) and simultaneous tracking up to 33 soldiers, and a software visualization package to integrate into a test/training system.